Project
Details
Chabad of Venetian Islands reached out about a film on the three mitzvot given to Jewish women: lighting Shabbos candles, family purity, and separating challah.
I directed and produced it. The three are usually explained one at a time, in a class or a pamphlet, and rarely together as one idea. Putting them in a single film meant finding a shape that let each one land without turning the piece into a lecture.
We built the film around archival footage of the Rebbe, which gives the three mitzvot their source rather than having the film assert them on its own authority. It runs with captions throughout, so it works on a phone with the sound off, which is where most of it will be watched.
It is a meaningful piece of work and I was glad to be asked.
Cutting new footage against archive
The archival material of the Rebbe is the spine of the film, and it does not match anything I shot. Different era, different stock, different frame rate. The temptation is to sand that down until everything looks like one thing, and that is the wrong instinct. The archive should read as archive. What has to match is the rhythm, so the cuts between old and new land on the same beat rather than feeling like two films spliced together.
Built for a phone with the sound off
Captions run the whole way through, which is not a post-production decision. It changes how you frame. Text sits in the lower third whether you planned for it or not, so anything that matters cannot live there, and headroom has to account for a caption block that does not exist yet on the day. Shoot it as though the words are already burned in and the edit is straightforward. Shoot it without thinking about that and you spend the edit choosing between legible captions and legible frames.
Additional Info
The rabbi at Venetian Islands is the brother of the rabbi at Chabad of South Beach, where I made the 2025 gala film.
See my short film work, or start a project.
